Page Two Of The 2003-04 Virginia High School Basketball Season
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1-10-04
I went to see Vernon Macklin play today, on a sunny but 10-degree, frigid day at modern-looking Oscar Smith High School in Chesapeake, Virginia.
Macklin's nickname is "Big Ticket," the same nickname that NBA star Kevin Garnett
has, because Macklin resembles Garnett physically at the same age, that of a sophomore in high school. He plays for I.C. Norcom High in Portsmouth, Virginia.
rates Macklin as the nation's second-best high school sophomore. Macklin is 6-9 and weighs 195 pounds: he's a forward, probably even a small forward. I went to see him in the one-day (Adidas Welcomes You To)"The Battle Of The Bay" basketball classic, held in the J. William Myers Gymnasium, also known as "The Dollar Dome," at Oscar Smith High School in Chesapeake, in the southeastern part of Virginia, near the North Carolina border. The gym was great: it was big, the seats were blue, there were stands on all four sides of the court, and there were thousands of people there. There were 5 games in a row being played today, but I was only interested in two of them.
also rates another Virginian, now-6-4 sophomore point guard Devin Johnson of Meadowbrook High, as the nation's 21st-best sophomore. Today, Meadowbrook was taking on Macklin's I.C. Norcom High School team. More on Johnson later.
Meadowbrook won this game, 63-53. Even without the ball, Macklin was always double-teamed. With it, he had 3 and sometimes 4 players converging on him. He only scored 17 points. With the exception of 6-4 sophomore forward Benjamin Finney , who has gathered some national interest due to his performances in AAU play, the rest of Macklin 's team is
horrendous. Finney looks like an ACC player, but he seems to be a poor shooter, ball-handler, and passer. He wasn't able to help his team break the press, and they had 7 turnovers in the third quarter alone.Macklin has hinted that he may go to Oak Hill Academy for the next two years, and who could blame him? It's amazing that he never appears frustrated or angry on the court, even though his team can't break a press, hit open jump shots, or learn how to feed him the ball. He throws great outlet passes that his teammates lack the talent to utilize. Macklin 's team was wearing black NIKE shoes and a purple warm-up top. His team's uniform had a white jersey and white shorts. Macklin is thin: he's kind of bird-chested. But he has a quickness that just can't be taught, and he doesn't mind posting up on offense every time down the court: a lot of big men would rather drift away from the basket on offense. He's an explosive leaper.
Macklin doesn't really look that much like Kevin Garnett at the same age. He's not as wiry-strong as Garnett was. His only real weakness as a player is that he releases his jump shot just above his head, instead of releasing it higher by extending his arms higher, so he has a tougher time going straight up and shooting as he should.
Devin Johnson is a muscled, smooth, tall point guard who I'd say is already wrapped up for Duke if Duke wants him. He looks like a Duke kind of a recruit: clean-cut. Johnson lives with his brother, who is a certified public accountant. Who does Johnson remind me of? No one really, but there are some physical similarities to Maryland sophomore point guard John Gilchrist . Physically, he looks a little like Kobe Bryant did at the same age, but of course, he doesn't have nearly the talent level of Kobe Bryant. He has some unstoppable spin dribbles, and although he only scored 11 points in this game, it was mostly because it was a low-scoring game. He's pretty much everything you could want in a point guard, on and off the court, which is why the private high schools in Virginia are trying to get him to transfer there. He controls a game with his flawless ball-handling. His Meadowbrook High team, from Richmond, Virginia, was wearing white socks, white shoes that were half-black in the back with a white heel showing through, and all-blue uniforms that had a wide gold stripe up the sides of the shorts. Neither team played very well: at the end of the first quarter, the score was only 8-5, Norcum. He's too powerful and tall for high school point guards to control, and he's bound to get even better.
Before this game, I watched Herndon High take on Salem High of Virginia Beach. Herndon High has a sophomore 6-0 guard named Scotty Reynolds . I tried to pick him out among his teammates, but was only able to narrow it down to 2 out of 13 players, and he was one of those 2. Herndon had black socks, black shoes with 3 white stripes, black jerseys with red numerals, and black shorts with red on the sides. Their warm-ups were just black warm-up tops that had white sleeves and a big red "H" in the center of the chest. As a freshman, Reynolds had averaged over 10 points-per-game on the varsity last season, while leading Herndon High to a 26-4 record. I had heard about Reynolds , who scored 39 points in one game this season, but figured that the level of high school competition in northern Virginia is poor, so I guessed that he must not be anything special. But I was wrong.Reynolds is probably the best pure jump shooter I've ever seen as a high school player in Virginia, and that includes Allen Iverson and even J.J. Redick! Reynolds ' jump shot is perfect: he reminds me of former UVa star Bryant Stith , minus 5 inches. Will Reynolds play in the NBA one day? I doubt it. Will he play in the ACC? Who knows? But he's sure to play Division 1 basketball one day, and it's worth the price of admission just to watch him take his man one-on-one and light it up. What a player!
Herndon won the game over Salem, 67-66, and Reynolds scored 35 points, even though he missed part of the first half after he was elbowed in the face and started bleeding. His team is now 11-2. Salem is now 7-6. To let you picture what Salem looked like, they wore all--white, but the back half of their shoes were red with just a white heel. Salem's well-known senior 6-8 215 forward Donnie Stith was frozen out by his own guards for most of the game. Then, at the end, he got the ball a few times, and showed some talent. He reminds me of Lorenza Watson , a 6-10 player from Buckingham County High School who played center for Virginia Commonwealth University back around 1973-1977. Or you could say he physically looks like a player who transferred from the University of North Carolina to Louisville back in the 1980's, Clifford Rozier. He's mostly a defensive player, plays much bigger than his height due to his long arms, and some of the low-major schools in Virginia, such as William & Mary, VMI, James Madison, and George Mason didn't do their recruiting job properly by letting a player like this leave the state to go to Tulane. Oh well: the more things change, the more they stay the same...
I happened to catch the last few minutes of a game between Coastal Christian Academy of Virginia Beach as they played Laurinburg Institute of North Carolina. I had no real interest in this game, since I try to just scout 9th, 10th, and 11th-graders, but it is somewhat interesting that Coastal Christian Academy has a player, 6-10 260-lbs. senior Jackie Butler, who started off this year at Laurinburg Institute and then switched to Coastal Christian Academy. He verbally committed to the University of Mississippi, as a senior in high school, and then to the University of Tennessee recently, but didn't qualify academically for a scholarship. Last year in high school, he was a second-team Parade High School All-American for McComb, Mississippi High School. Is there any chance he could interest in Virginia or Virginia Tech? Not to my knowledge. Despite his weight, he's lean and looks like an athletic big man. You'd never guess that he weighs 260: he is as slender as a man who weighs 210, and he can run FAST. As far as his talent goes, his hands appeared to be suspect. But it's too bad that he's just passing through the state of Virginia, probably on his way straight to the NBA and skipping college altogether.
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12-30-03
I went to a tiny, brand-new gym in Charlottesville to see unknown junior center Wikrum Bajwa play. Bajwa is a 6-11 player for Holy Cross High School in Lynchburg, Virginia. You won't find him on any list of prospects, although he does start for Holy Cross, and does have some shot-blocking skills. He wears goggles, is slender, and is neither athletic nor a leaper. He did not score. His team won the Covenant Christmas Classic by beating The Covenant School of Charlottesville, 64-55.
I was impressed, however, with 5-10 freshman point guard Waverly Washington of Covenant. Washington is similar in some ways to 5-10 former University of Virginia point guard John Johnson as far as shooting style goes. Washington scored 13 points, and is a smooth penetrator and flawless ballhandler. His style is a little like former Georgia Tech point guard Kenny Anderson . (Just a little. We're just talking about high school ball here.) However, he needs a lot of work on his shooting. Still, he will be playing Division 1 basketball in 4 years.
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12-29-03
A sportswriter who's seen 7-2 junior center Matt Hewson of the Hylton High School boys' basketball squad in Woodbridge, VA told me that
"It looks like Matt might need some work... Matt should be pretty decent next year if he's healthy and I would think might get some looks just because of his size. He'll have to bulk up, though, in order to play at the next level..."
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12-25-03
How good is the high school football in Virginia? Well, it's not nearly as good as the boys' high school basketball in Virginia is, not with Oak Hill Academy here in the state of Virginia. In fact, apparently it's average. However, the post-graduate teams at Fork Union Military and Hargrave Military give the state of Virginia something that the other ACC states don't have. Still, on the 'USA Today High School Football All-America Team' that came out on December 22, not a single player from the state of Virginia made the 46-player first or second teams, nor did a player from the state of Virginia make the list of "Ten Juniors To Watch" nationally for next year. Even the state of North Carolina had 3 players on the 46-player list of seniors, and no high school team from Virginia was on the 'USA Today Final Top 25 Teams', although 5 teams from other ACC states made the top 25 list.
What does this all mean? It means that the University of Virginia and Virginia Tech have to do a lot of their recruiting out-of-state some years, and that's always much more difficult.
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12-19-03
Sometimes there's no point in sugar-coating things. I went to see seven-foot two-inch junior Matt Hewson of Hylton High School in Woodbridge, Virginia play tonight, and he didn't even start: he was the sixth man.
However, don't forget that the University of Virginia was glad to sign 6-11 senior center Tunji Soroye of Montrose Christian in Kensington, Maryland, who also didn't start as a junior, and who is averaging only 10 points a game this year, yet UVa is counting on him being at least a 3-year starter for the Wahoos.
Hewson transferred to Hylton High from Paul VI High School, and is the tallest high school player in Virginia, so I decided to go scout him. Cecil Hylton High School is on Spriggs Road, off of 234 North, which is off of 95 North. The traffic on 95 North isn't too bad, but on 95 South, it's a nightmare at almost anytime of the day. To get to Hylton High, you pass by brand-new Forest Park High School first. This whole area is a big, heavily populated area that is constantly building more and more large high schools. Hylton High probably has the best high school football program in Virginia, but sure isn't known for boys basketball. However, I counted 105 district, regional, (12) state, and national championship banners hanging from the Hylton High School gym, although Hylton was just opened in 1993. Many of the gyms in northern Virginia are nicer and bigger than some of the college gyms in Virginia.
Hylton was wearing white warm-up shirts with a black line on the front and back that met a yellowish-goldish line on the front and back, in kind of a "V" on the front and back of the shirts, starting under the arm of each shoulder. The "V" came to a point in the middle of the back, and the middle of the front. Hylton High wore white shorts with wide black trim, and a wide stripe running up the side of each leg. Hylton's jerseys had brown numerals with the yellowish-goldish trim. Potomac High had Carolina blue high top blue shoes with dark blue shorts and jerseys, and Carolina blue uniform numbers with black trim.
The Hylton High gym was impressive, seats almost 3,000 spectators, and had a huge lobby. Although the temperature outside was in the 20's and snow was on the ground, all of the tennis courts were lit up...
Hylton competes in the Cardinal District and the Northwest Region. Both benches were on the same side of the court. The gym was capable of being converted in to 6 basketball courts. The first game, the girls' game, ran until 7:24, so the boys game started around 7:50 instead of 7:30.
The Hylton Bulldogs were playing host to the Potomac Panthers of Dumfries, Virginia. Potomac High coach Kendall Hayes is a legendary coach in Virginia, and his team's full-court press (and the outside shooting of his son) befuddled the entire Hylton High team. Potomac led 14-8 at the end of the first quarter, 34-23 at the halftime, then 54-34 after the nine-minute halftime intermission and third quarter, and then won 75-56. I counted at least 20 turnovers for Hylton.
Hewson looks every bit of 7-2, but I'd guess he only weighs about 205 pounds. He may still be growing. He plays very aggressively. In fact, he plays so aggressively that I calculated that he fouled out in just 7 minutes and 32 seconds of play! He only had 2 points and 4 rebounds, but it's hard to score when your guards can't get the ball past the half-court line, refuse to (or are unable to) pass you the ball when you post up, and instead jack up hopeless three-pointers. From all reports, Hewson had played much better (and more) in Hylton High's opening game of the year against Osbourn Park.
Facially, Hewson resembles former Duke star Mike Dunleavy. His calves are fairly strong, but his upper body is bony. At this point, he's a Division II prospect. But in high school recruiting, some big men suddenly develop athletically very quickly and enexpectedly, so who knows? Hewson has a soft shot and some bounce. He entered the game at the 2:14 mark of the first period, and then came out at the 5:58 mark of the second period. He entered the third period at the 3:11 mark and was taken out at the 1:16 mark. Then, in the last quarter, he entered at the 3:04 mark and fouled out at the 1:33 mark. Because no one would (or was able to) pass him the ball, he tried reaching for it over the backs of defenders. He plays with a lot of intensity. He had a few intimidations on defense, and had some good offensive rebounds. He can jump up to the 11-foot mark. He had to wear a different kind of shoe than his teammates, a NIKE shoe, because of the size of his feet. There were no game programs or rosters available at this game.
